Editorials
Why the “Ash vs. Evil Dead” Series Finale is a Cruel Joke [Spoilers]
Back in 1992, Sam Raimi took his Evil Dead franchise in a new direction with Army of Darkness, a full-on slapstick horror film that sent Ash (Bruce Campbell) back in time to battle a medieval undead army. While the theatrical version of the film ended with Ash battling a deadite inside S-Mart, the original finale was much darker. After Ash takes too many drops of a special potion, he pulls a Rip Van Winkle and awakens 100 years in a post-apocalyptic future. No matter which ending you prefer, Raimi and Campbell teased a fourth Evil Dead, which became fan obsession. For nearly 20 years we begged and pleaded for an Evil Dead 4…
In 2003, things took an interesting turn with the success of Freddy vs. Jason, which nearly resulted in a sequel that would pit Ash against Freddy and Jason. Only, Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures had huge success with their remake of The Grudge, which then caused them to turn their focus on rebooting The Evil Dead with a fresh filmmaker. While we were blessed with the Fede Alvarez-directed Evil Dead back in 2013, it wasn’t timely and was extremely underappreciated – it still wasn’t our long-promised Evil Dead 4, even if Ash made an appearance in the closing of the credits.
Just two years later, on October 31, 2015, Starz premiered “Ash vs. Evil Dead”, which boasted the full-on return of Bruce Campbell as Ash. While it wasn’t Evil Dead 4, it was exactly what the doctor ordered… and then some. A full season of Ash kicking deadite ass? Yes, please. We were then blessed with two more seasons, which just concluded this past Sunday night. Shit, we got a remake and literally 10+ hours of a television series, not to mention Raimi also sneaking the wonderful Drag Me to Hell into the mix back in 2009.
To recap, our bellies are full, right? Nope.
Coming from a place of love and eternal gratefulness of what we’ve already been given, I can’t help but feel like the series finale to “Ash vs. Evil Dead” is anything short of a cruel joke. You see, the final episode concluded with a sequence in which, after a long sleep, Ash wakes up in a post-apocalyptic future. Does that sound familiar? When Army of Darkness concluded, we were left with hope and spent many excruciating years begging for a followup. With “Ash vs. Evil Dead”, we were left with a cliffhanger and Campbell announcing the retirement of his character. There’s a ton of irony here in that we got everything we could have ever wanted and yet somehow came full circle back to Ash in a post-apocalyptic Detroit and are left begging for more. The only difference is now we’re left with no hope, which is just cruel.
I’m left wondering how this happened? Was this the plan all along? Were Raimi, Tapert and Campbell giggling as they brought us full circle back to our fandom purgatory? If so, it’s such cosmic brutality that I can’t help but laugh. On the other hand, it sort of feels like Starz put the filmmakers in a weird position of not knowing for sure if there would be a fourth season of “Ash vs. Evil Dead”. The announcement came just ahead of the ninth episode airing, which means, assuming this decision was actually made that week, everything was already delivered for airing. Then again, if Raimi and co. had plans laid out for another season, why would Campbell so quickly turn in his chainsaw and boomstick?
It’s highly unlikely that the Evil Dead will say dormant, but it does feel like a kick in the nuts to know that we’ll never actually see Ash’s arc carried to a full conclusion.
Then again, perhaps that’s always been the franchise’s cruel destiny.
Genre fans rejoiced this week as Peacock finally released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Crystal Lake TV series starring Linda Cardellini as horror’s favorite killer mommy. This sneak peek is actually the first footage of an official Friday the 13th project since the Platinum Dunes remake came out over 17 years ago, so it makes sense that we’re all incredibly hyped for this long-awaited prequel.
While we’ve since received more information about the show -including how all eight episodes will be released at the same time on October 15– fans wasted no time in speculating about the direction they think showrunner Brad Caleb Kane intends to take the franchise next. After all, Kane’s team is free to adapt elements from the entire Friday the 13th franchise, so it seems that anything goes at this point. That being said, I doubt we’ll be seeing young Jason depicted as a fun-sized killer with an affinity for hockey masks, as I’m of the opinion that the show is likely reaching back to the original actress behind Pamela Voorhees herself in order to fill out the prequel’s story.
You see, after sifting through behind-the-scenes interviews and plenty of special features from my own Friday the 13th collection on physical media, I learned that the late, great Betsy Palmer had come up with an elaborate backstory for Ms. Voorhees that was never properly explored in the films. She may have only accepted the iconic role because she needed money for a new car, with Palmer notoriously referring to Victor Miller’s original script as a “piece of shit”, but that didn’t stop her from taking her work seriously – and eventually even warming up to the now-iconic film.
Trained in the Stanislavski Method, an infamous system where actors use the “art of experiencing” to more realistically portray their characters, Palmer decided to build off of Miller’s script and make her own notes in order to characterize Pamela as a more complex and arguably sympathetic figure, even if only a fraction of her contributions would actually make it onscreen.
The only real information she found in the script concerned her character’s prominent class ring, and from there Palmer extrapolated an entire backstory where Pamela had a high school boyfriend during the 1940s that got her pregnant and then skipped town. This led to Pamela being forced to raise her child all on her own during a deeply conservative period in American history – another reason why the character is so bothered by the camp counselors’ promiscuity.
It was Tom Savini who first revealed to Palmer that Jason was going to be depicted as being disabled (an idea that wasn’t in the original screenplay), with this crucial addition making the actress realize that Ms. Voorhees was already overburdened even before the death of her son. The tragedy only pushed her over the edge as she became a puritanical vigilante attempting to shut down Camp Crystal Lake at any cost.
For Palmer, this means that “Camp Blood” never had any curse, as the multiple fires and poisoned water incidents that kept the camp from reopening before the summer of 1979 were merely part of Ms. Voorhees’ years-long vendetta against the property’s owners. Palmer also insisted that the killer in the sequels isn’t the original Jason, as he definitively drowned at the bottom of Crystal Lake. According to her, having Pamela’s child return even as a killer revenant would undo her entire character arc, meaning that the masked murderer who takes over her legacy must be someone or something else entirely!
CRYSTAL LAKE — (Photo by: Matt Infante/PEACOCK)
These ideas match up with most of what we’ve heard about Peacock and A24’s plans for the upcoming series, which is set to follow Linda Cardellini as Pamela after she gives up a career as a singer in order to take care of her disabled son, played by Callum Vinson. That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised if the writing team decided to borrow from the woman behind the machete in order to make the series more authentic to the source material.
Of course, there are rumors floating around that the show could also feature a teenage Jason in some capacity, so we’re still not sure about how exactly Kane and company plan to adapt their project to the franchise’s ever-changing mythology. That’s why I’d like to invite fellow readers to comment below with your own theories about where you think the prequel show is headed!
For now, I think it’s safe to say that Friday the 13th fans are more than ready to binge-watch Pamela’s bloody origin story when it finally drops this October. And who knows? Maybe the show’s success could finally lead to a new mainline film…
CRYSTAL LAKE — Pictured: Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees — (Photo by: Peacock)
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